‘Like I said – you chose a place of faith, Rajjo.’ Arjan looked at her and smiled. Rajjo smiled back, and continued walking. She led them into the maze without thinking. She knew they would give her all the time she needed. For now, she just needed to be around them, hear their voices. Soak in the place.

They entered the maze, a labyrinth of hundreds of narrow stairway passages, some of which had dead-ends, some ended at precipitous drops while others lead to entrance or exit points. ‘The bhulbhulaiya was constructed to confuse any intruder,’ muttered Kuljeet as they walked along. The guide had mentioned it was a three-storeyed structure surrounded with almost five hundred doorless galleries, where one can roam endlessly for hours, adding to its mystery. There were strategically built hollows in the corridors.

The narrow lanes of the labyrinth strangely did not make them feel as if they were lost as Rajjo guided them through.

The trio stood at one of the exits, taking in the quiet evening. The gentle breeze brushed their sweat-laden skin, cooling it. It was an echoing silence. Finally Arjan turned towards Rajjo, ‘It’s ironic that we walk through this maze. It’s meant to make people forget their way.’ Rajjo smiled. ‘He is dying. It’s whispered in my ear, only I can find his hidden breath, where do I look?’ she looked at Arjan with despair. Arjan smiled at her and said, ‘You cannot find his breath in the dark devious hands of your empire. Nor in the time you played with fire, when you sold him in anger. Find your way back. Go back to before you started your journey as a Godwoman, when the raindrops on your skin warmed with hope and faith.’

She remembered the window from which she had thrown the deity out. She remembered the smell on her skin of that man who had raped her through the night. She remembered the cold tap and the water dripping on the bathroom floor as she sat there, half dead. She remembered sitting in the bus and leaving her village far behind. There was nothing more to be said here. To go back in time she would relive the horrors she left behind, open the wounds, tear the scabs and let the blood ooze out, till there was nothing left to cover and hide.

As they stood at the five-storeyed stepwell, formerly a royal bath, Arjan tossed a coin inside the well. Rajjo waited to hear the clink of the coin hitting the shallow bottom, but to her surprise, it never happened. ‘Only the first two storeys of the baoli are above water, the remaining three remain permanently under water. It was constructed around a large well that was initially dug as a reservoir for storing water for construction work near the imambara. It turned out to be a perennial source of water, being connected underground with the river flowing nearby.’